This fellowship honors the legacy of Dienje M. E. Kenyon, a pioneering zooarchaeologist, by supporting early-career women archaeologists conducting graduate-level research in zooarchaeology. The fellowship provides financial support for MA and PhD students to conduct their research projects, promoting the training and development of women in the field. Its goal is to promote high-quality zooarchaeological research while fostering the next generation of scholars in the field of archaeology.

Sarieh is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia, specializing in zooarchaeology under the supervision of Dr. S. Pilaar Birch. Prior to her PhD, she worked as a master’s student and freelance zooarchaeologist in the Bioarchaeology Laboratory at the University of Tehran, and contributed to several international zooarchaeological projects under the supervision of Dr. M. Mashkour (CNRS and MNHN).

Her research focuses on faunal remains from the Zagros Mountains in Iran to investigate the origins of pastoral nomadism and seasonal transhumance within their broader environmental and social contexts. She will analyze bone and tooth samples from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, employing a multi-method approach that combines traditional zooarchaeology, stable isotope analysis, and proteomics (ZooMS) to study domesticated livestock, complemented by ethnographic analogies for interpretation.